Corporate Social Responsibility

Agriculture

Our agricultural businesses are very long term by nature. For example tea has a productive life of 50 years if managed in a long term sustainable manner. As a result we actively manage our environment to ensure the long term health of our land and water resources. We pay particular attention to:

Soil conservation

Agrochemical and artificial fertilizer use

Biodiversity and the conservation of natural forest on our estates

Water storage and preservation of the catchment

Social welfare

We are large employers of people (over 13,000 in our food group) and have coherent and easily understood codes of conduct. We have higher standards than that required by local labour laws and we seek to improve upon them further following recommendations from our external accreditation schemes.

External accreditation

All of our businesses are subject to independent auditing by recognised standard setters. For the tea businesses these include Rainforest Alliance, UTZ, Fairtrade and the Ethical Tea Partnership; and for the roses, we are certified by MPS.

Carbon footprint

We aim to progressively reduce our carbon footprint over time by more targeted use of fertilizers, lower diesel fuel usage from less tractor usage and & using electricity that is sourced from our hydro-electric power schemes.